


Hunter

by lothkitten



Category: SHINee
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Implied Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 01:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lothkitten/pseuds/lothkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHINee’s been broken up for five years, and Kibum’s realised just how messed up his life has become and how much he wants to be free again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Dido’s “Hunter.” I've never written anything quite like this, or any JongKey, so this is a lot of firsts for me.

  


Flickering tv lights in the window spoke to the wakefulness of Kibum’s boyfriend. Jjong’d promised he wouldn’t stay up, he would, he had been staying up whenever Kibum stayed out, so Kibum felt justified in the late hour. But then, he’d been justifying himself a lot lately: it’s only a kiss, there’s nothing wrong with keeping a phone number, Jjong hasn’t wanted to dance like this for a year and it feels so good to really dance.  
 _  
Jjong hadn’t wanted to do much of /anything/ for a year with Kibum that didn’t involve showing him off at launch parties for the artists who bought the highly successful composer/lyricist’s songs. At first this had been endlessly entertaining, two of SM’s former boytoys with their arms draped around each other, Jjong in his perfectly tailored sport-suits, Kibum setting fashion firsts with every step in his self-designed shoes. But then, the slide, the descent started. Slow at first, Kibum noticed his Jjongie began to treat him less like a partner who had interests and a career of his own and more like a spoiled housewife, a toy dog to carry about tucked under one arm and pet when he remembered to._

A book sat on the table next to the chair Kibum had once jokingly called Jjong’s throne. Tiny, glittering gilt flecks set into the paint and varnished over gave an appearance of wealth but left some sense of taste - it wasn’t as if the whole /chair/ was gold. Kibum knew the look on Jjong’s face, knew it well. Accusing, burdening with guilt. Kibum also knew his lipstick wasn’t his own, or rather was his mixed with a sheen of a dark red he’d never wear. He wondered if Jjong would know that, would notice, would care. He didn’t. He only cared that Kibum was disheveled, late, even for him, and showed signs of another person’s hands over him.   
 _  
Arguments with them had never been subtle. When SHINee first debuted, their matching egos brought on endless fights, Jinki muttering that he was learning to be a leader from smoothing things over between the warring divas. Despite fandom and skinship, Jjong had clung to his heterosexuality like the thin veneer of a drying bubble in the summer’s heat. Key had waited through all those years, enjoying himself with the 91st line meanwhile, knowing that some day he’d be able to pounce.  
_  
“Had fun?”  
“Yes.”  
“You look wrecked.”  
“I am.”  
“You know you’re mine, Kibum. Why test me like this?”  
Smile. Pose. Raise eyebrow. “Because I can.”  
“No, you can’t. Not and come back to me like /this/. Do you expect me to let it pass?”  
Jjongie, be smart, let me go. Let me free. “No. I don’t expect you to.” __

 _It took a year of partying and enjoying their new found adult freedom for Kibum to shimmy up to Jjong in a club one drunken night and, his cat-like eyes blackened and sooted and glimmering like a girl’s (as Jjong thought), whisper, “Jjongie, dance with me.” Jjong knew he could never keep up with the young man who had once been Key when it came to dancing, but Kibum didn’t seem inclined to make him keep up so much as hold still while he pressed hard muscles and soft fingers all over his body. They’d fallen into a bed, wild and hungry, and Jjong had discovered just how talented Kibum’s lithe little body could be._

“So you did it to provoke me yet again, and admit it. Coming home like a whore, whinging for her share of the pay when she’s been playing on the side.”  
“I only want to be your equal, Jonghyun, you know that. I’ve said so repeatedly.”  
“But you aren’t, Kibum. You’ve been my little pet, my good little wife, twirling for the audience and smiling for the cameras.”  
“I never signed up for that, for this. I wanted you, wanted to be with you, from the time I was too young to know anything.”  
 _  
The scratches over Jjong’s whole body the next day, and the days following, showed Kibum’s ownership. Jjong made the joke about cat’s having servants and not owners many times in the following months. He pampered Kibum within an inch of his suddenly spoiled life, and the first few years were enjoyable - never peaceful, but that was expected._

“You signed your neat scrawl on this contract when you practically stopped working and agreed I’d pay for everything last year.”  
“You wanted it that way!”  
“And I want you to continue the way you were, before you started going out without me, before you started coming home like this.”  
“So the Royal Musician wants me at his side, the princess in the tower, nothing more than a pretty face?”  
Smirk. “Now you have the idea.” __

 _Four years later, and Kibum began to wonder how he’d become nothing more than a lapdog for the royal boy. He found himself discouraged from pursuing his clothing line too aggressively. “There are enough new designers out there throwing all their ideas out at once, keep some for a rainy day, baby, and don’t try to push too hard.” As if Kibum would go out of style and ever need a reserve! Jjong didn’t take his own advice, either. One article commented he was like a cross-company version of Teddy during YG’s golden years, another said he had given more good songs to a larger number of artists than anyone else in K-pop’s history. And Kibum sat there at his right hand, smiling his enigmatic smile as praises heaped up, dragon-share, for the man he loved._

“Why didn’t you just date some hapless fangirl and marry her?”  
“Because you were a prize, you were worthy, and I love you.”  
“Loved. You /loved/ me. Love implies care, love implies consent, and this relationship is pushing the edge of that right off the cliff.”  
“I do care about you, and as I said, you consented to this.”  
“I don’t remember ever having a conversation to that end, Jjong.”  
Sad little smile. “Maybe you were too busy planning your next wardrobe change.”  
“Maybe, just maybe, I was too busy thinking I finally had you.”  
“And that’s where you were wrong. /You/ never had /me/.” __

 _One day Kibum came home from visiting his family to find a party going on in their penthouse. Jjong just laughed off all of Kibum’s confusion at the women, and men, piled around his lover and told him to go get into something less conservative, something that would show off just how beautiful he was. It was just a spur of the moment thing, it’s not like he was cheating on him or anything. Calm down, get dressed, look your best. Commands, without consideration. Since Jjong had told him off for wanting to go to an important fashion show the previous weekend when he was wanted at some mindless event, this rankled deep. He nodded, his smile bitter, and put on one of his loudest outfits, one he’d designed down the last detail and one that insisted he stand out. Tonight at least he would prove he was something more. Jjong kept him near the whole evening, and when the party was over Kibum realised he hadn’t talked to one person that he hadn’t been directed to talk to. The next night he’d bowed out of a model-turned-actress-turned-singer’s debut and had gone to a club, by himself.  
_  
Kibum spun and turned the tv off, leaving them in the darkness except for the streetlights in the distance and the thin spill of brightness from their bedroom door being open a few inches. He set his jaw and walked up to Jjong, taking note of the sparkle from the throne on the side nearest the bedroom. Their bedroom. “I chose you, Jjongie. I was the one who culled you out from the herd, who took you in hand and pushed you to be better. You’d be wise to remember that.”  
“But you gave all that up, Key, long ago. Why would you want to go back to that? We’re so... happy... like this.” The sneer on Jonghyun’s face belied his words and Kibum stepped closer, his anger twisting inside like a living thing.  
“I wouldn’t call any of this happy.”  
“Too bad, I would. And that’s all that matters at this point. You’re not some wildcat any more, you’re my little bitch. Get used to it. I’ve tamed you.”  
 _  
Thinking had overwhelmed him the last few weeks, so when a nubile young man, barely overage and with eyes that flashed in a way that Kibum, jaded for his years, thought his must have once done, caught him by the hand and tugged him away from the bar, he went. He lost himself in the pulse of the music, blending with the strobes and the bodies and the heat until he felt something stirring that had been squashed dormant. He gave in to it, almost crying with relief to find he was still able to take the beat and transform it into something wild and unearthly and freeing. The boy-man could barely keep his eyes and hands away from Kibum. It was exhilarating and flattering and he craved it like a drug he thought he’d kicked. That night when he stumbled into bed and found a drunken, slumbering Jjong already asleep he settled down against the expensive mattress and sheets and fell dead asleep for the first time in longer than he could remember, bone-tired from dancing and the rush of endorphins._

“You’ll never tame me, Jonghyun. That’s where you’re wrong.” Kibum’s voice cracked and he hated himself for it. He hated the brittle laugh that crackled through the tense air even more.  
“You’re funny, Kim Kibum, funny like one of Jinki-hyung’s stupidly repeatedly jokes. Do you honestly think you’d trade this life for anything else? I could toss you out tonight and you’d be back in the morning, mewling for your milk.”  
“No, no I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t ever come back to you.”   
“You’re... you’re begging. Do you even realise how far you’ve sunk? It’s almost disgusting, if it wasn’t kind of funny. The Almighty Key, begging for his freedom.”  
Key lunged.  
 _  
He began sneaking out, like a teenager slipping out of the SM dorms to go clubbing with the big boys. Each time he did it he realised just how much of himself he’d lost, how much the unthinking toy he’d become. It was one thing if that was your desire, but it had never been his, and it had happened so slowly he hadn’t seen it coming until his will had been sapped down to nothing. Every night he grew a little more firm in his desire to leave. Every night he found one more thing wrong with how he’d been living his life, or allowing his life to be lived for him. He knew he could just go some day when Jjong was gone, but that wouldn’t have any sense of finality to it - he’d just be running away. He needed to confront the man who he’d spent his youth wanting and his young-adulthood loving. Jjong was becoming more and more annoyed by his almost-nightly escapes, he knew he just needed to push it a little harder. He needed to stop justifying his faux-freedom and reach for what was real._

The papers proclaimed it the greatest loss to the Hallyu Wave. Kim Jonghyun, former member of the SM boyband SHINee and brilliant composer and lyricist, was found dead in his penthouse apartment early Monday morning, the cause of death was announced as a combined concussion and broken neck from his chair crashing into the hard-wood floor. There seemed to be some confusion about whether he’d fallen back accidentally (the high alcohol content in his blood spoke to this), or if he’d been pushed. The police were at a loss: there was no sign of forced entry but the most likely suspect, his lover Kim Kibum, had been seen out clubbing that weekend by many witnesses. No one ever saw the mix of guilt and triumph in Kibum’s eyes.


End file.
